Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/95

 squad with you. Arrest him before he kills that man."

Vanderhof turned. The doorway held a burly, grizzled oldster in police uniform, and behind him a group of plainclothes men, their profession easily established by a glance at their feet. There were guns.

E WAS sent staggering. The horsefaced man had made a break for freedom. Vanderhof, boiling with rage, plunged in pursuit. There was chaos on the threshold; then Vanderhof was past, and racing after his victim.

A bullet whistled past his ear.

Oh-oh! This altered matters. Vanderhof, hidden momentarily behind the bandstand, paused, looking around. He saw no one —the horse-faced man had vanished—but heard voices.

"He went behind there—get him—guns ready, men!"

Vanderhof thought hard. He visualized the drunk. And, instantly, he assumed the appearance of the drunk.

He ran out from behind the bandstand, almost colliding with the sergeant and a plainclothes man with him.

"Hey—"

"He went that way!" Vanderhof cried. "After him! Don't let him get away!"

Without waiting for an answer, he ran for the exit. There was startled silence, and then the sergeant and his crew raced in pursuit.

Vanderhof leaped out into the open air, flattened himself against the wall of the building, and concentrated on the face of the plainclothes man who had accompanied the sergeant. And, of course, the inevitable happened.

The sergeant appeared. He cast a swift glance at Vanderhof.

"Where is he, Clancy?" he bellowed. "Which way did he go?"

"There!" said the pseudo-Clancy, and pointed. He was borne away in a mob of detectives who gushed out of the exit. All of them were busily searching for a freak with six arms and an impossible head—a freak who no longer existed!

Ten minutes later Vanderhof, in his normal guise, was on the train bound back for Manhattan. It had been easy to drift away from the detectives, who naturally suspected nothing. And, after that, Vanderhof wanted only to get away from Coney Island. His nerves were in bad shape. He needed a rest.

So, illogically enough, he went back to New York.

He was still angry about the horse-faced man. He would have dearly loved to have taken another poke at the guy. But the police had interrupted. Vanderhof's resentment wandered, and finally focused on a man with bristling blue-black hair and a vicious gleam in his eyes. The guy looked uncommonly like S. Horton Walker, president of The Svelte Shop.

Walker—nuts to Walker, Vanderhof thought. "Fire me, will he?" the chameleon man brooded. "Just on account of Colonel Quester! Tchah!" The fashion show would be going on soon, he remembered. And, simultaneously with the thought, Vanderhof grinned.

A singularly malicious and unpleasant grin....

"Fire me, will he?" he asked rhetorically, turning into Ajax for a brief moment. "I'll fix him!"

While making his way toward the Fifth Avenue store, he pondered. He was achieving some sort of mastery over his chameleon-like changes. If he visualized a person, he could become that person—though his clothing never altered. And, with an effort of will, he could resume his normal form. Good enough. What now?

The fashion show was in full swing when Vanderhof slipped quietly into The Svelte Shop, unobtrusively making his way behind the scenes. Dowagers and damsels